136 / Village at War
crowds of waiting, anxious laborers. All of the jobs were menial, and
some even demeaning, but the Vietnamese were anxious to work. A small
number of them, including some from the villlage, worked in the camp
laundry, a Korean contract operation, or in the mess halls or post ex-
change. Others worked picking up papers and garbage. Still others dug
ditches and performed other maintenance tasks. Finally, there were men
and women American soldiers called "shit-burners," whose job it was to
dispose of feces from Camp Eagle's latrines. 19
Others profited from the camp but did not work there. Although the
101 st declared the village off limits to American soldiers, violations of the
ban were frequent enough to permit off-base "services" to emerge. Some
small shops opened on the road leading into Eagle, selling soft drinks and
beer. Most of these shops were also black market currency exchange
points, and they sold marijuana and other drugs. Others along the road
specialized in same-day laundry service, so some houses were literally
covered with drying American uniforms and undergarments. Several prof-
ited handsomely from illicit contacts with lOlst soldiers. One man, at the
time a Government soldier, lived along the road, and tried to cultivate
friendships with U .S. soldiers. Through such friendships, he bought soft
drinks and beer from the post exchange, and sold those items on the local
market, splitting profits with the Americans. Another man, a Government
soldier, worked as a pimp.
And then there was Tony. The case of the young boy who took an
American name illustrates how exposure to Camp Eagle changed a dozen
or so young men and boys in the village. At about age 12, Tony left his
impoverished mother, wandered onto Camp Eagle, and simply stayed.
There U.S. soldiers informally adopted him, and for about two years he
rarely left Eagle's boundaries. The boy picked up military slang, and
learned the heavily accented English language of the southern U .S. He
grew to love American food and appreciate American rock musical
groups, especially the Creedence Clearwater Revival. After two years at
Eagle someone then decided to put Tony to work. The boy began travel-
ling with a 101st military police unit. "They would drive me into the
village," To~y remembered, "and when I saw anybody selling things on
the black market I would get out of the jeep, give a signal, and they would
have a Vietnamese policeman arrest that person."
At age 15, Tony for some reason turned on his American benefactors.
He recruited two or three others his age from the village and nearby Phu
Bai, and began to steal from open-top U.S. trucks. Typically, the boys
waited near the intersection in My Thuy Phuong where the trucks had to
stop. One of the boys would climb up onto the trucks and toss boxes to
friends waiting below. Later, when the trucks slowed, the boys tossing
boxes would climb down and escape by waiting motorcycle. Periodically,
Americans driving the trucks caught Tony. But usually the boy's "ten-
der" age worked in his favor, as did his command of English. The Ameri-
cans never jailed him.
Fighting the Eagle 137
Many other children and some village women became Camp Eagle's
garbage-pickers. South of the camp, just across the village border, there
was a garbage dump, which served Eagle and other nearby installations.
Open trucks hauled garbage to this spot and dumped it. The dump was a
veritable gold mine of abundance for the garbage-pickers. They found
numerous usable or resalable items there, including packing materials,
office supplies, uneaten food, and castoffs from individual soldiers. Every
day about 12 children and women from the area could be seen at the
dump. Sometimes their eagerness for "good" garbage was so great that
they climbed unloading trucks, and sometimes there were tragedies: a few
children were buried under avalanches of dumped garbage.
Then there were Camp Eagle's combat activities. These did far more
than heighten tensions and bring social and economic changes to the
village, for they caused significant physical damage as well.
First, there was perimeter defense. As part of the defensive arrange-
ment, throughout Eagle there were various types of bunkers, partly un-
derground structures of metal and sandbags for use in event of attack. The
perimeter itself consisted of a maze of tanglefoot and concertina wire
surrounding the camp. Throughout the perimeter area, lOlst soldiers scat-
tered claymore mines and gas cannisters, set with trip fuses.2o The entire
area, it should be noted, was completely devoid of vegetation, a result of
chemical defoliation.21
But the bunkers, the wire, the claymores, and the gas were not enough,
in the estimation of lOlst commanders. Every night, and often during
daylight hours as well, fifteen or sixteen patrols of four to twenty men
each moved outside the perimeter. They ranged as far as about two miles
from the camp, crisscrossing My Thuy Phuong and surrounding vil-
lages.22 In addition, Eagle commanders sent small groups of five to nine
soldiers armed with M-l6 rifles, grenade launchers, and various types of
mines on nightly ambush missions.23 Sometimes with faces greased black
for concealment, the soldiers proceeded two to three hundred yards in all
directions from the perimeter. Ambush parties waited low and patiently
for Vietnamese to wander near the camp.
Many in the village, especially those who lived in sections closer to
Eagle, had numerous stories of the perimeter. Most felt that to approach
the camp from any direction, day or night, was risky, for patrols and
ambushes seemed to be everywhere, and bunker guards were alert and
always looking for targets. A peasant described what happened once
when he tried to visit his family cemetery plot, in an area within sight of
Camp Eagle:
I came during the day, and was carrying a few tools with me. My son came up
behind me with a wheelbarrow, to carry dirt. But when we got to the graves,
there was much firing coming from the American camp. And I heard one or two
bullets hit around us.
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